Dragon Celadon Gaiwan, TeaDragon

Review of the dragon celadon gaiwan, available at the Imperial Tea Palace as well as Puritea Lounge.

I recently received this gaiwan as a thank-you gift from a coworker, and by far this is now my favorite gaiwan!

First, the celadon makes the full-bodied dragon on the gaiwan stand out in a dramatic yet subtle fashion. The dragon wraps around the entire cup. There is a single indigo blue stripe on the inside of the cup. The lid has a formation of clouds, and the saucer has a formation of frothing waves. Overall impression is gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous!

Hand-feel is fantastic. This is a HEAVY gaiwan due to the thick walls, unlike the other thinner gaiwans in my collection. You're not afraid it will break in your hands, and it almost encourages you to cup your hands around it. Add to this the silky feel of the celadon finish, and you find yourself absentmindedly petting the cup while you're drinking.

Since the walls are so thick, you can really take advantage of this to either rapidly cool down boiling tea, or keep hot tea hot for longer. I like to fill the dragon celadon with hot water and let it heat the cup while I brew my tea in another thinner walled gaiwan. Then, dump out the hot water and pour your tea from the brewing gaiwan into the celadon, and you have a lovely cup of tea that not only looks gorgeous but stays hot for a good long time.

My only complaint about this gaiwan is that the lid does not fit as well as expected. The lid wants to sit slightly off kilter, and there is a small gap present no matter how you rotate or center the lid in the cup.

Definitely a gorgeous gift for any dragon/gaiwan fans; I'll be trying very hard to keep my klutziness away from this one!

I have the same design in an infuser mug that Hou De found in their warehouse. They were looking for a specific one for me to give to someone as a gift, they couldn't find it, but they found the celadon dragon mug instead. After seeing the pictures, I bought it for myself even though I never used an infuser mug before. It is, as you described, quite thick and heavy. I don't use it often, but it has worked out very well when I do, especially for darker oolongs like Dan Cong.

If your gaiwan is made by the same company as my infuser mug, that would be An Da Studio of Taiwan (according to both Hou De and Pure Puer). Pure Puer has a matching tea storage jar, but it is not airtight.

pgho wrote:I like the color and the dragon motif is really cool indeed. How is the feel, does it feel hot on the fingers when pouring?

I've been using it extensively this past week. It takes a little longer to heat up with hot water than other gaiwans, but the advantage here is that the thicker edges and top mean you can handle it without singing your fingers while pouring. It pours very nicely, by the way.

Here's my current technique. I keep dropping the cheap gaiwan (and knocked a hunk out of the lid), so I'm being careful to use this gaiwan as a drinker rather than a brewer. I pre-heat the dragon with water appropriate to the temperature of the I'm making while I'm brewing the tea itself in a cheap thinwalled gaiwan. Once the tea is ready for drinking, I pour out the water in the dragon and then pour the tea into the dragon and drink from that.

Even if I'm using boiling water for pu'erh or black oolong, the dragon is thick enough that I can actually hold the cup without burning myself. It's HOT, make no mistake, but with the thin walled gaiwan I'd be in pain and dropping it. This is going to be especially enjoyable in the winter time, as the dragon holds plenty of heat with greens that you can cup it in both hands to warm your hands up.

My only complaint about this gaiwan is that the lid does not fit as well as expected. The lid wants to sit slightly off kilter, and there is a small gap present no matter how you rotate or center the lid in the cup.

that is actually done on purpose by the potter -- you should not consider it a flaw. if it fit as perfectly as you can envision [and they were surely capable of producing it to do so] the heat of the brewing tea would cause a vapor lock, making it very difficult to remove the lid. so you are experiencing, not an imperfection per se, but a consciously included technological advancement based on centuries of gaiwan implementation!